Vet tells harrowing tale of life as POW

NEW BREMEN - Guy Gruters, a former U.S. Air Force captain, gave a powerful talk on Friday about his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Gruters, who lives in Sidney, told high school students about his imprisonment in Vietnamese POW camps from December 1967 to March 1973. He learned to place his faith in God and to avoid negativity at all costs.

While serving as a fighter pilot in the Vietnam war, Gruters racked up more than 400 combat missions.

He was shot down twice during missions in northern Vietnam while trying to mark enemy convoys with colored smoke for bombers to target.

The first time he was shot down, Gruters landed in the water.

"We just barely made it off the coast. We're just offshore and got out just before (the plane) blew up," he said. "We're down in the water in little survival rafts and we have 12 enemy boats come out from shore."

An American plane opened fire on the enemy boats, forcing the sailors back to shore.

"About 50 of their men were in the water. Those boats left their buddies behind to die," Gruters said. "I never saw any cowardice like that in an American unit."

Gruters, whose wrist was broken in the crash, was rescued by a helicopter unit 45 minutes later. The crew members who rescued him were killed the next year rescuing another pilot.

The second time Gruters was shot down, he was captured. He spent the next five years in a string of Vietnamese POW camps, where he was forced to endure torture, starvation and horrifying living conditions.

"Living in those cells was like being in a bathroom for five years, with no recreation and no interaction. You're in the cell, you're in the cell, you don't leave the cell," Gruters said. "The tortures that they used were many and varied. It was 24/7, you were never out of torture."

On one occasion, Gruters and another man were forced to carry an emaciated prisoner who had been beaten by the camp guards. As he carried the skin-and-bones man, Gruters said the man looked up.

"He says, 'aren't you Guy Gruters?' I said, 'yeah.' He said, 'it's Lance Sijon.' And I said, 'oh no. Not Sijon.' Sijon was in my squadron at the Air Force Academy for three years. He was a good friend of mine. A really good man. They beat him to death over that month," Gruters said, growing quiet. "I got very upset."

Despite the horrors inflicted upon him through the years, Gruters refused to give in to despair and relied on his faith.

"The basic principle is, 'in God I put my trust,' " Gruters said. "And you never want to be negative. You don't complain. You take the last little heart out of someone if you complain."
While the Vietnam War is one of the nation's most controversial, Gruters had a very clear-cut opinion.
"We fought in Vietnam because the communist strategy and Lenin's from 1920 on was to take all the little countries across the world with wars of national liberation by the socialists," he said. "The United States met the threat in Vietnam. Over 500 million Asiatic people are free today because we held the line in Vietnam. Never forget that, no matter what anyone tells you in school or anything like that. Vietnam was probably the greatest fight we were ever in."  

Gruters ended his talk by showing an emotional video of his homecoming. The grainy footage showed him disembarking from a car directly into the embrace of his younger brother, who had grown into a man while Gruters was away.

Gruters had seven children with his wife, Sandy, who had waited for him all those years, not knowing if he was alive. Two of the seven children were born before Gruters was deployed.

"Sandy is my angel," Gruters said. "I owe her everything."